[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

EUNICE ENGLISH:

—in the Civil War. On the letter he had written to the cousin over here that lived down there in Findley, that he was on guard duty and the war was about over. He was doing all right and hoped everybody back home was. And if nothing else happened he'd soon be back home. Told them not to answer the letter because it wouldn't get to him in time, and just those little chit—chat things that a person would write. But after we found it and got to looking through it, someone made the comment about him on guard duty. In 1865 you didn't have fountain pens. You didn't have ball points or anything like that to write with. And how he must have been writing it with—wasn't it quills?

ROB AMBERG:

Quills pen, right, a goose quill, I guess.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

He wrote in blue ink. After it was over he had dotted it all over in red ink. Why we don't know.

ROB AMBERG:

I wonder if the red ink would have been something like [unclear] berry or something like that.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

We have no idea. But it was amazing—as much as, you know, children ransack trunks way back in those days—why I had never seen it before until after all my ancestors was dead. And one day I just opened up the trunk and it seemed like it jumped out at me. I had made some copies to give the kids in the family. But mine was in a drawer that went to the river. So I lost that.

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But I've got one here that was written in 1882. So that's as far back as—I don't even know who this is. I've never seen it before. Charles Sears. This is the same—John T. Lee was that fellow's name. But the writing he had was so immaculate. You couldn't believe somebody just standing on guard would—. Nowadays you do good to even read half of what you get. This was to a sister.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well, for purposes of the tape I'd like to just say we're here in the Northeast community. If I could have people go around and say their names, I think that'll help the one who transcribes to know whose voice is whose. State your full name. And it's on December 8, 1999. I'm Charlie Thompson.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Eunice English.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Raymond English.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Wayne English.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

My name is Charles Russell English.

ROB AMBERG:

I'm Rob Amberg.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Thank you. So we were just hearing Mrs. Eunice English describe some of the letters that she had saved from the flood. You had a lot more but you say —

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Some —

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Probably thirty different pieces here.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Uh-huh.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And who was this person in the Civil War? How is he related to you?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

He was my grandmother's nephew or first cousin. I do not know for sure. He was a Lee from over in New Bern area.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Oh in New Bern.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

She was from over there. So it was some of her close relatives.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And you grew up in that county over near—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

I grew up in Pender County.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In Pender.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Um-hmm.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. In what community?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Shelter Neck.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Shelter Neck.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Near Bergar.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. And you and Mr. English are married.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

That's right. Soon be fifty years.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Were you always from this community, Mr. English?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yes, sir.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Where do you live now? How far from this location?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

One tenth of a mile.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Good. And that was Shelter Neck?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Um-hmm. That's where I came from.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

His mother came from there. My granddaddy came from up here. And his daddy was up here. So they criss-crossed visiting.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Is that how you two met?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Um-hmm.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You want to tell that story, how you met and where it was?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Well, at that time his daddy was sick. His cousin that lived down next door to me came up to see his uncle. So a bunch of us came up with him because it was family connections. So that's how we met, visiting.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That was which year?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Forty-six.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In 1946 when you met.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

And married in fifty.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay, how is everybody else related here?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

That's our son.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I'm the son.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

That's our son. This one is his brother's son.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Nephew.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Son and nephew.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay, son and nephew. Well with all of these rich knowledges and histories represented, it's hard to get it all on one tape. Often with oral histories, we concentrate on just one person's history. That's usually known as a life history. But what I'm trying to do here is mix in life history with the community and flood history all together. So we'll go backwards and forwards a little bit. I want to include parts of your lives that will enrich this collection about the flood. Because in order to know what was lost and what the community's like, this community that was flooded, I think we have to go back into history some. And so we have those kinds of stories. Your saving of these letters is part of what was lost. So maybe we could talk about that a little bit. How did you get these—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

You talking about how the community basically started?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Yeah. Should we start with that or—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I could probably give you the overview on—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well let's start with that then.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well, a personal note: I used to be quite active in doing genealogy things. I ran into a clinker and I just got it laying aside so perhaps one day when I retire I'll have the opportunity to pick it back up again. But our personal family genealogy that I can document goes back to 1790. I am of the fifth generation, Wayne and myself. Uncle Raymond is of the fourth generation. And, of course, the other generations are long gone. The first documented record that I have of the English family in this country is 1790. And that was in Pender County, which is, as the crow flies, less than fifteen miles from where we sit here. In 1800—to be brief—1836, our generation came to this property right here. A gentleman by the name of Stephen English, he had two marriages, raised two families, of which our generation is from his second marriage. He had a son and two daughters of which was my grandfather and Uncle Raymond's father. At the time he came to this part of Duplin County in 1836, of course, there were Teacheys—surname Teacheys. That's one of the older names of Duplin County. And, of course, there were Hancheys of which perhaps you have interviewed some today. I think Betsy told me they were on your schedule. The Carters were a very dominant name in the community. The Batts and, of course, the Cavenaughs, Southerlands, Englishes, Bradshaws, and each were given territory then. And it's amazing that how these parcels of property are still in the families

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today. And we're an example of that even here. As I said before, you know, it goes from generation to generation to generation. The earliest recorded document that I can find goes back to the early 1800s. This area was known was Paisley, North Carolina. Even on the maps today you will find it as Paisley. I think it got that name from the rail companies that would go into this area that were logging, in the logging business and using steam engines right up the road here less than a quarter of mile. Close to Betsy's place, if you visited there, is the old Cavenaugh house. They had a little sub-station there where they would put water in the trains, you know, that were going over into [unclear] to get timbers out. I don't know how it came up with the name Paisley. But Paisley is still on the map even today. The earliest recorded that I know of—and I'm fifty-five-Northeast, would be the Northeast School. And Raymond could probably share some of that with you. Where was the school, Uncle Raymond?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

About a quarter of a mile up the [unclear] River.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay. That was across the creek. Is that the one beside the church or the one up there around Mr. Carlise's before they moved it to the church?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

One side of the church.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

One side of the church.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

At first it was two rooms. What we called big room and little room. And they went as far as eleventh grade, twelfth grade. Well, when it got kind of thickly populated through here, they built on to it. They built a room onto it. Later on

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consolidation come around. And so then everything had to go to Wallace. And that was in 19—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Twenty-eight, twenty-nine.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well, no, it was before then. Let's see I graduated in twenty-eight and twenty-nine and went through—. So that was twenty-eight, twenty-nine—about twenty-five.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Twenty-five. That's when they went to the old Clements School in Wallace. Is that right?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

The old Clements School in Wallace. There's where I went, continued until I graduated.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

From high school.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah. The first year a bus ever went up and down this road, I drove it. I drove for four years. It was an old dirt road at that time. One of them was a Model-T. It was a push and a pull. The last two years I had a different bus. It was a Dodge. It held about four children. So that's about the early part and the later part of my life.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Did you go to the little school up here at Paisley before then?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yes.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

And how did you get there?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Walked.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

How far of a walk was it?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

I'd say two tenths of a mile or so.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Isn't that the old Annie Mae Hanchey house?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay. That was the school was it not? [Phone ringing]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

That school is beside the Northeast Church, which is right over here across the creek. The church was established in 1828. At that time it was part of the old original Freewill Baptist Church. As a matter of fact, we just celebrated our hundredth anniversary last year. To be brief and summarize, I feel that our community is a strong community with very, very deep roots. You could interview anybody in this community and they would tell you basically the same thing. Not to be derogatory, but to someone outside that would come in here, may consider us not from a religious aspect but maybe a cult community in that we've got our little old idiosyncrasies and we've got our ways, as is true in any rural community. When I say we, I'm saying that collectively. We don't like a lot of progress. We like things to be the way they were thirty, forty years ago. It's a general consensus of most people in the community. You've probably heard that already. We're not easy to accept growth by any means. I think most of the people, particularly sixty years and older, would rather see things stay the way that they are. Several political issues have been brought about in the community that have been voted down, for instance, county water systems. We're country folks, you know. We've got our own water. God's given us water. So that's the type of community that we are. I also feel that as in any rural community there are patriots that are more domineering when it comes to civic organizations, religious organizations. Every community's got to have a spokesman and we've certainly got ours. We've got our leaders and those that are good followers in the community.

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I think, for the most part we're a proud community. Self-supportive and, perhaps, highly competitive maybe to keep up with our neighbors. I don't know. I have no statistics to base this—probably the average age of our community is that of retirement age, or pretty well near because our kids go forward with a formal education, and they go for opportunities. Therefore, they leave the community. So, in a sense, you could say it's a dying community. At the same time, because this was a rural farm community, you know the problems that's happened to the farm belts in the last few years. Tobacco issue is one thing. People aren't doing as much agriculturally in this community as they were twenty or thirty years ago. I think education for the most part in this community would be limited to elementary or perhaps high school. We've got a few college graduates around. And, as I said, the industry here before was farming and that no longer exists. Most kids today that do go off and get an education, they either don't come back or if they come back they will come back to more or less run the family business, whatever it is, usually a small business.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Before you go on, when you say farming no longer exists, many people might think, well, there are all these turkeys that are—. What do you mean by farming?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well, when I was looking from tobacco I grew in my era—and I'm fifty-five—we didn't know what chickens were unless you go out in the yard and kill one for dinner. That's how things have changed over the last thirty years. Yes. There is a poultry industry here. There is a hog industry. But in this particular community we don't have any hogs. Maybe one or two, as the crow flies,

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within a mile or so range. I think there's one farm over here. So I'm just speaking in terms of this community. Yes, there is poultry here: turkeys and chickens. That is basically the agricultural mark in this community. A little tobacco but nothing like there was ten, twelve, fifteen years ago by any means. Most people that had tobacco allotments on their farm either sold the allotment—. Some are leasing it out that it might be tended elsewhere. I think the Hancheys are about the only one left around here. Uncle Raymond, isn't Sam about the only one that's raising tobacco now?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Around here it is.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

So I'm speaking in terms of just this community. I think—this is my opinion—but, yes, the flood has definitely changed the community. Now this is my opinion. Because of the devastation, neighbor can't help neighbor anymore because everyone is so preoccupied in getting their own affairs back together. Before we had the church to fall back on, we had neighbors to fall back on. But with the devastation there's nowhere to turn. And people are too in tuned to trying to get their own affairs back together. I think the consensus of the community is that those that can afford to make their repairs are getting aid, while those that cannot afford to make their own repairs aren't getting as much. So I think there's a spirit of enviousness or perhaps competition. Some will restore on a short-term basis, some will restore on a long term basis. Some may not ever. My Uncle Raymond is at a young age of ninety plus living on a fixed income, as most people of retirement age are in this community. And without relief—. The biggest

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part of the relief that we have had is from outside churches. There's not a Chinaman's chance that the people could restore. Am I accurate? Government aid has been slow. But let me emphasize: I understand. North Carolina's never seen anything like this before, so government aid has been very slow in coming to this rural, nine mile stretch community that's been so hard hit and so devastated. Had it not been for churches as far away as from Raleigh, South Carolina—. I've had people at my residence from as far away as Alabama that have come to our aid to try to help us. I don't know what people would have done. Will we come back? Absolutely. We're strong enough that we will. Like I said, some can do it on a short-term basis. Some will be a long-term basis. Some will have to start all over again. I'm it exactly. My place was so devastated that, you know, you're looking at a good hunk out of a new home to make the repairs. So my wife and I felt—and there's only two of us—that we'd be better off to start all over again and build ourselves a small home. That's our goal right now. Whether or not we will accomplish that goal remains to be seen because I am facing that age of being among the majority of this community, retirement. Ten years away is not that far. So what do you do? The government says, yes, we can help you with a thirty-year mortgage. What does a ninety-year old man need with a thirty-year old mortgage? What does a fifty-five year old man need with a thirty-year old mortgage? I want to do something with the rest of my life besides make house payments. So giving you a brief overview—basically as the English family, where our roots originated from—we're English, of course. There's Scotch in this community. There's a

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little German over here with the Hanchey background. And a little Irish and, you know, we were all kinds of people two hundred years ago. But now we're, you know, we're one. We are a community. That's what makes America what it is.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

[unclear]

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Going back, speaking of the early days, the way that we farmers made our money was with strawberries. Well, as time progressed I remember when tobacco first come into this neighbor. My father and Mr. Johnny McNettis over here built a barn, and they put out a little tobacco and they grew it. And they sold it out here to Wallace [unclear] . From the tobacco that's gone into the chickens, hogs, turkeys and that's where we're at at the present day.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Did you grow strawberries?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yes. My father grew strawberries. While I was in the war I was working in the shipyard. I was first drafted into the war and stayed in there at Camp Landry, Florida. When I left there I come to [unclear] shipyard—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In Wilmington? Where in Wilmington?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

In Wilmington shipyard. I worked there three years and six months, five days. And the war broke [unclear] . I grew tobacco and had some strawberries. I worked the strawberries when I got home from the shipyard. I had to go to work in the strawberries. And I grew some cucumbers. And I come into the tobacco business. One time I had close to thirty some odd acres and we had five barns. You'd get up of a morning and by the time you would go to one place, one and another place, it just about consumed the morning part of the day.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And how many children did you raise by farming? That was your main income, I assume?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Two.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Two children? There's Wayne and you have another—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

One is deceased.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. And Mrs. Eunice, were you working off the farm or on the farm as well?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Helping him and busy raising the boys and keeping things going.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Somebody mentioned earlier that there was a strawberry market in Wallace. How did that work?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

It was the strawberry market of the world.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

The world.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The radio station here is WLSE, world's largest strawberry exchange.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

An old water tank out there—on the old water tank, Strawberry Capital of the World.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I don't know how true that is.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

1930, 1940.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

For a ten-year period it was the largest strawberry producing county?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. World's largest strawberry exchange. It would be like the largest produce market that there was, certainly in the United States. When they said the world back then, you know, the United States was the world. But it did carry the title of the world's largest strawberry exchange. That's where everybody took their strawberries,

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produce market, and from there it was distributed to various part of the "world": United States, South East, wherever.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

This was before California found out about strawberries apparently.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It must have been.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So do you know how far your strawberries went in the country?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

New York, Baltimore. They shipped them all over the place. At that time it was by rail. But later on, it got by trucks. Naturally, the rail lost out and they finally quit running.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

I haven't seen a railroad track here anymore. Is that gone?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well it's in Wallace.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

There's one goes into Wallace to the wholesale place there.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Mr. English, how many acres of strawberries were you growing?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well at that time we were two to three, sometimes four acres.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You mean it took a lot of people to raise those.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

It took a lot of work. It took a lot of rake and straw, too.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They didn't have tractors back then.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

We wouldn't have but a full four acres in but one year. But we would rake the straw over them of an evening, rake it off of a morning. That would keep the bloom from getting killed. So you couldn't do very many that way. But after a while it got to the place that if you took the weather as it come, you could increase your acreage.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That's one reason they called them strawberries, wasn't it? Now when you went to pick them who all participated in that?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well people in the neighborhood. The last years I had them I went over at Maple Hill and got colored people and put them in an old house that we had back over there. They lived there and I paid them. I don't know if it was five cents a quart.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

They used to pay—I picked them for five cents a quart and they would give you a little token, a little tin token every time you would pick a quart. You had to pick them with the little stems on them. They had to be so long. Had to have them stems on it for some reason. I haven't figured out why. They couldn't be too ripe. As a child I remember picking strawberries right out there. They give you a little token. At the end of the day they would count your tokens. I can remember getting a nickel for every quart that you'd pick.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

I can go back further. I remember them being a cent and a half. [Laughter]

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

I can go back further than that being a penny. The first money I ever made in my life I made picking strawberries for Mr. Billy Duff. I asked him if I could pick his strawberries. He said, "You reckon you can do it?" I said, "Yes, sir." I was small back then. "You take the outside row." I said, "Uh-oh, I'm whupped now." But anyway I picked enough strawberries off that row to get me a dime. So I had money. Could go to the store and buy one of these long sticks of candy.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

How long would your picking season last when you had a couple or two or three acres of strawberries?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

The strawberry season? It would last around three to four weeks.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You paid a penny or as little as a penny and a half or five cents. What were you selling those strawberries for at that point?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well they were taking them out to Wallace for about three dollars a thirty-two quart crate.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

S when you were growing two or three acres you were selling a lot of quarts. Do you remember—?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Made a trip or two a day.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And when you shifted over to tobacco, what sort of a size allotment did you have?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well about three acres at that time. It was an old log barn. I remember that the logs was drug out of the river swamp down here, a Cypress log. I went out there and I just couldn't crawl up on that log. So they had the tobacco right behind the place there and some over there. When they moved it was to Hickory Pryor.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Hickory Pryor?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Hickory Pryor. Yes, sir.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

P-R-Y-O-R?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

I guess.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Was that the type of tobacco or was that the name of—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

That was the name of the tobacco.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Name of the tobacco.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Variety mainly that you were planting.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Right. But it didn't make much [unclear] about a thousand pounds. It was a good acre. But then they got—through our agricultural department—they got to

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improving it more and more and more and more. Well they put out one or two varieties. Just made so much until they cancelled it out and wouldn't let us grow that.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And when did you stop growing tobacco?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

About ten years, I guess, now.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

At least that long.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You grew tobacco for about forty years. And made the majority of your living by tobacco then for that long? Where were you selling your tobacco?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well, I carried some as far as Georgia. I carried some to South Carolina to Jasmine. And sold in Wallace. Sold in Wilson. Sold in Rocky Mount. Sold in Kinston. Sold wherever I heard that it was a good price. That's where I went and sold my tobacco.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

There was no tobacco market in Duplin County.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Not in Duplin.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Not in those early days.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Then later there was one in Wallace?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yes, it came to Wallace. Langston and Fairger built a tobacco warehouse up on Main Street in Wallace.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Is it still there? Is that warehouse still there?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. A Wal-Mart's there now.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

This was about the fifties, wasn't it Uncle Raymond?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Huh?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

That was about in 1950 wasn't it when they built that warehouse in Wallace? Was it earlier than that?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

It was earlier than that.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It was earlier.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Uh-huh. It didn't stay there I'd say a period of eight or ten years. The town began to progress. It had to get going.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well as the town began to progress, what was making the town grow if tobacco had to go?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well, tobacco was coming in strong.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Oh, tobacco was strong.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

But the tobacco warehouse had to go.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They built more.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. In Wallace?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Um-hmm. They had—how many tobacco markets were there up there in the hay day like?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

There was Langston and Fairger, Sheffield—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Bill Hussey.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

He had an early warehouse.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

So there was about four or five—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The industry began to change drastically in Duplin County in 1951 when the textile industry came to Duplin County. I spent thirty-five years and twelve days there. Plant closed—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

J. P. Stevens?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Started out at J. P. Stevens. I started there in 1962. In 1986 they sold out to the Cosan Group, which was knit fabrics. They were later bought by Delta Woodside Corporation in 1986 and they closed that facility March the fifteenth 1998.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And when you got out of school when you first started working you went directly into the textile industry?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Directly into textiles as an industrial engineer.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You went to NC State?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. I went there right out of high school. Graduated from high school May the 22nd 1963 and started there June the 6th 1963. I worked there all of my working life until a year and a half ago when the company shut down. I spent twenty-eight years in research and development. The last five years I was there I was a planning manager. When they closed the doors I had to seek employment.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Where did that plant go? Where did that company go?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It closed.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Closed completely?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

As [did] twenty-eight more plants across the southeast.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

They didn't go to another country?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. That's what cost us the company, this off shore products. We couldn't compete with foreign labor and that's why the company shut down.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Then what did you go into after textiles?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well I had some offers in textiles. But the apparel business due to the NAFTA act that was passed in this country, we can't compete anymore. I elected to

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change careers. Right now I'm an office manager for a small family owned business in the HVAC, heating and air.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

And I'm office manager of a local heating and air company. Hard road to handle. Then a year and a half after that, having to adjust to half of a salary, then the flood comes. I'm [unclear] but don't take it that way. We're okay.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

No. I understand.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

But, that was the leading industry in Duplin County up until about a year and a half ago.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

What is the leading industry today?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Pigs.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Pigs. Do you call that progress? Is this progress for most of the people here?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Personal note. Well I'd have to say from a political aspect, yes, it would be growth. However, growth has a price to pay. That kind of growth, I think, has been detrimental on our environment. I don't want to sound like an ecologist or one of these people that gets out and totes signs. But it's had a devastating affect on our environment, to our rivers, to the pollutants, to a well right out here in my yard that has been chlorinated four times and we still don't have drinking water. It has wasted the water. We never had these problems before so they came from somewhere.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I think that the major problem with the devastation was not really the water but the actual contaminants that were in the water. Used to be when they had floods, as I think I've mentioned before, the water would recede and people could go on

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and pick their crops, some of them, and no problems. But now everything is so contaminated.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well obviously the contamination is still here, isn't it?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The contamination is still here. Wells are still contaminated. Our clean water and clean air acts are just being mocked in this community, not only state but federal, clean water and clean air acts. It's just a mockery the way it's being treated. Most of the things that people lost could have been saved if runoff water hadn't come through here. But due to the amount of bacteria and everything, everything was just so contaminated that it had to be got rid of for health reasons. And we still don't know what the future affects of that will be. There's been a lot of illness in the community, a lot of sickness, a lot of sores that won't heal, a lot of upper respiratory problems. According to one doctor I talked to, they don't know really what to plan on six months from now, but they do expect a lot of respiratory problems

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

In 1962 we had a flood in the community. It doesn't compare to this at all. It didn't go in Uncle Raymond's house. I think it lacked six or eight inches for getting in his house in '62, but I'm using that to say that when the waters receded in 1962 I think people still harvested some of their tobacco. The soybean crop, they harvested it. The corn crop, they harvested it. To reiterate what Wayne has said, go look now. There's no green vegetation at all even to trees. We had planted some, over a thousand pine trees down on mine and my brother's property down in the Creek Swamp, what we call the Creek Swamp. The trees

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grew about that much in a year's time and everything's dead. All the vegetation down there's dead. To reiterate what Wayne said, just natural water don't do that kind of damage. I've seen mature trees seventy-five years old that are dead due to the nitrogen content—I'm assuming. I'm certainly not a chemist, but due to the pollutants, contaminants of these waters that—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Pesticides. Could there have been herbicides in that water?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I'm sure there was.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I think a lot of it is contributed to—and here again, this is a personal opinion—from the chemicals that are used in some of these swine industries, perhaps poultry as well, that have gotten into our wells and into our drinking water, and certainly in the streams. My sport is canoeing. The northeast Cape Fear River runs about—I believe it's ninety miles from its point of origin down to Wilmington.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Where is the point of origin?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Ghossen Swamp is actually where the northeast Cape Fear River would start, which would be up in the Goldsboro area.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Going towards Goldsboro.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Can you describe that river? Have you floated it all the way down? I mean, can you just kind of go through in your mind from leaving that swamp all the way to the ocean? Do you know the river that well?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I have only made the trip all the way to the ocean one time in my life. When we canoe we will go up to a little town called Beulahville, which is about fifteen,

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eighteen miles from here, and we will put in the river where it's rather narrow up that way. And we will canoe—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

About how wide?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The widest point there would not be over probably twenty-five, thirty feet.

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Anyway, I have canoed the river in low water where you would have to drag the canoe at times, and I have canoed the river when the water would be receding, I mean, would be out of the banks. You really couldn't tell where the run of the water would be or the run of the river would be. It is a beautiful river. As a matter of fact, I have met canoeists on that river that would come as far as Pennsylvania just to canoe the northeast Cape Fear River because of its natural and scenic content. There's beavers. There's otters. There's deer. I've never seen a bear, but there is just about any kind of wildlife you want to find on that river. To say the river is clean, no, it's not. Not compared to what it was fifteen years ago. You can tell every time that you get close to a hog house, as we call them, a swine producing facility, because you can smell the stench from the river. I have actually canoed the river when I would see suds coming from ditches that would be coming from a hog house up on the hill. I have tried to attack it on a political level in going to our county commissioners, making complaints and it didn't seem to do any good. About a year and a half ago there was funds appropriated to clean that river. Somewhat over—how many million? Don't quote me, but well over a million dollars to clean that river, which, in my opinion, caused more devastation than it was before the

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river was cleaned because they would snag it, pull the logs out, throw them on the banks. Well, guess what, when high water comes it washes them right back in the river again. I think that that could have had some adverse affects to the flood. The water had no where to go. On the other hand, it don't normally rain twenty plus inches in a twenty-four hour period either. We had rain that equaled almost to that amount plus we had rain about three solid days before Hurricane Floyd ever hit us. So the ground was already wet, already saturated. There are very few trees. I haven't canoed since Hurricane Floyd, but on our property down here we've got about a mile of property on the river between me and my brother, maybe two miles. Every tree that was left on the riverbank now is in the water because the root system was so saturated with water there wasn't a foundation there to hold the tree. So they've just fallen over in the river again. Should this happen again this year due to hurricane season—. As a matter of fact, I just heard the news tonight. I don't know if you heard it or not on Channel 6 in Wilmington. They're predicting seven major hurricanes next year of which three would be of greatest intent that would hit the North Carolina coast. I say that to say that if we get the rain waters even on a local level right here in this community that we did with Hurricane Floyd, it's subject to happen all over again because the water had no place to go.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Let's go back to Beulahville area, the Goshen Swamp. Is that right? Goshen Swamp and go back down through here. A lot of times we've heard through this flood story in other communities, it's all the development that's occurred: housing and new roads and so forth. When you look at the watershed starting up there at the swamp,

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has it changed that much in the last fifteen years? Are there a lot of new houses, a lot of new highways or are we mainly talking about a change in the farming system?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I think the change is locally. I think a change in the farming system has hurt the rivers more than anything else. Yes, we do have a new facility right down the road here, River Landing, that big golf resort.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well the logging industry runs that.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. The logging—. Everybody has sold—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Every bit of tree that—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. There's very few trees standing there.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I heard one the other night that a tree could absorb, I think, it was well over two hundred gallons of water a day. People that we've talked to that have dealt with floods before has told how much affect development does have. Like I say, in this community you can just keep seeing the logging industry. I heard one report the other day that they have just logged out this part of the country—that you had to go up to where the mountains or the northern part of the state now to find good tracts of land.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It's a great affect to the—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The outcome of that instant money-making business is never realized. Same way with when you try to pack two million hogs in one county. You go to figure up that a hog puts off four times the amount of nitrogen and maybe forty times the amount of ammonia of human waste. When you've got two million hogs in a county, you're figuring, well, you've got two or three New York cities dumping their waste in

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this county every day. That's open air, not a treatment place. With that amount of chemicals in the water, it's going to be making it dangerous. To begin with everybody is selling their timber as fast as they can. Every logging crew around here's trying to get it as fast as they can. Whether it's being used locally, shipped to California or Japan or wherever, trees are in big demand. When you have a combination of terrible contaminated water, too much water and no trees, no landscape to absorb it, naturally when you put all the factors together, you're asking for trouble.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

A big erosion problem.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You said open and untreated waste. Is that in the hog industry line? Is it that lagoons are a way of treating—?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

There's no way to treat the lagoon waste other than—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well, it's open air. I mean you've got nitrogen and such components of the waste are absorbed into the air. Then it rains back down. So they can say it lays on the bottom all they want, but, you know, it's absorbed into the air and then it's carried over to the mountains. I'm sure everyone's seen pictures of the trees in the mountains now from the acid rain affect it's having up there. You just can't dump that. All these ponds—. My father's had a pond for years and years and years. The last ten years the pond stays green all summer long because of nitrogen based algae that grows. It just won't go away. There's just so much nitrogen. It used to be a nice place with beautiful water. People would go fishing. I've looked at ponds around the neighborhood and all around the county. Even running water, the mill pond bridge, the famous grist mill—one of the oldest in this area. I looked at it the other day when I went by. It's running water and it's still eaten up with green algae.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The creeks are the same way. The creeks are filled with green algae.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I heard a little kid the other day. His grandfather was showing him the river. The river was real low back in the summer and the bottom of it was a black, murky—some kind of substance with green algae just growing all over it. The grandfather was telling his grandson how he used to swim in that river and that when they got real thirsty they'd take a swallow or two of water. The grandkid couldn't believe it. That's just two generations. He has seen now that it's impossible. Well it's possible, but very unhealthy or unwise for the grandkid to enjoy that. Another generation it'll probably be the same with the fish. I mean, you know, the stories of listeria and everything else. Not too many people eat fish out of the river. That's been going on since time started. People caught their food and ate it, but now it's got to a point around here that—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Not since Hurricane Fran.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

It's too dangerous.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I'm a bream fisherman and it's not unusual at all in bream season to see the fish that you catch have sores on them. I wouldn't eat that.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In the ponds around here?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No, in the river.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Northeast Cape Fear River.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Wayne do you remember swimming on the river as a kid?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Oh yeah. That's where I got my Saturday bath. [Laughter]

ROB AMBERG:

So would you go down there with your family or friends? Describe a swimming trip for us.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well back in the sixties it was just a—. Well being in the country you weren't privileged to the city extra curricula activities, so what we had was basically farm work and swimming. All the kids would gather up and go to the river. You had good, cold, clean river water to swim in. Now it's a whole lot different. It was a big social event, really. Going swimming was a big deal especially for kids who didn't have their driver's license, you know. They could go not too far in any direction and catch a swimming hole. It was a big social gathering place.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Tie a rope to a tree and built a makeshift diving board and that's where you spent Saturday afternoons and Sundays if your parents weren't too religious. [Laughter]

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

When you come to the house you were clean. Mother used to make her own soap. We'd kill hogs and she'd take all of the skins and the loose parts of the—I call it the lard part. She'd seize it. She'd make her a pot of stew and she'd put some of that old grease in the pot and boil it. Then she'd put lye in there and she'd cook it down and when she'd take it up, it'd be just a little bit of real dark looking water on the bottom of the pot. We used to have a little swimming hole down there in this creek and when you took a piece of that and went in there and jumped in and all like that, you were clean. [Laughter]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Come out right red, didn't you? [Laughter]

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah. It near about make you bald headed. [Laughter] I guess that's how come he's that way now. [Laughter]

WAYNE ENGLISH:

It was, especially as a kid, one of the more favorite things—part of the summer. It was the community spirit in going swimming and just having a good time.

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Like you said, stringing a rope to a tree and having a good time. That's why it's so sad to hear the grandson make the comment to father saying, "You actually swim in that water?" This was a kid, you know, ten years old, but he knows. He can look and he can see. He didn't like the idea of getting in that water.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

You know, that's part of my earlier comment. We're not susceptible to change around here. Even myself at my age, I wish I could go back to those days when, to borrow a line from Junior Sample, when pot was something that you used for the bathroom. We didn't know what pot was. A pot was a commode as a kid. We didn't know what drugs was. Even when I was in high school if you drunk a beer, you had done something big time. People just didn't do that. We never locked our doors in this community until maybe five years ago because now we don't know who our neighbors are anymore. The things that's happening, that was happening in Wilmington ten or fifteen years ago have caught up with us on the rural mart now. We know what crack is down here in Northeast community now. We know what alcohol will do now. Like I say, ten, twelve years ago, we didn't worry about that kind of stuff. That was something for somebody else. So, yes, there's some of that in me that I would love to see things back the way they were, not only before the flood, but farther back—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Times were more innocent.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. We were innocent and perhaps a little more naïve than what we are now. I think that's the consensus of the community as well.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Could we talk about two specific things that I've heard more about from other people? But I'd like to hear more about them from you. One is the global transfer.

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That is something they proposed for here, but the community fought it. That's all I know. The second one is River Landing that you mentioned. I was wondering if you could talk about both of those as issues of change in the community? One you fought and won against and one you didn't.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

With global transfer, basically—we knew what that was.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I think it's proved itself.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

It's proved itself. It was an excuse to raise taxes and to throw away money on somebody's pet project. Nothing's going to mature. It'll never be anything. It's just like the one out in Texas that he tried to tell me years ago that's sitting out there empty, several million dollar airport.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

What did they say it was going to do for the community?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Oh, it was going to make us the Atlanta of the eastern seaboard, you know, bring business and industry and the higher tech industry to replace the textiles that were leaving. Open up eastern North Carolina to be—. I guess they were going to make a Research Triangle area out of it or what they thought—. But what we saw was a tax increase first.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I was somewhat an activist in that, which there have been some repercussions, so I want to be careful what I say. We asked the same questions now that we are victims of today. Primarily, what will it do to the environment? The property was part of the Kenan estate, who were very influential in this community—Thomas Kenan, UNC, the Kenan family of Guilford County. Their roots are here in Kenansville. They have a place right down the road here less than three or four miles, known to us in the community as Kenan Quarters. There are several hundred acres

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of land back there, which is in fact wetlands. We asked the same questions then that we would ask now: what will it do to the environment? Wayne has already said, and as proof will show if you look into the records by it being in Kinston, I think the last count I had—I forgot how many millions of dollars has been spent, but there hasn't been a block laid, nothing structurally, just a bunch of political rhetoric in my opinion. The community asked questions and we were told everything in the world that it would be. They told us that our homes could be condemned if it fell within the parameters of how the planes would fly, you know. Anyway, a lot of questions were asked. We wanted to know, who would benefit the most from this? Would the state of North Carolina benefit? Would our community benefit? What's it going to do to this community? In essence, it will wipe out this community, we were told.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Will you go back and [unclear] . He's the one [unclear] if I have two cars. I go to get my license. I have to pay ten dollars extra to go to that place. All that it has done for that county, that city, is built the nicest airport that is in the United States. Now, nobody never hears nothing about it. What we're going to do about it. I have heard that they were going to move it out of this state into another state [unclear] . But that over yonder has just about done what it's going to do. [unclear] great big stumps that they just enjoyed the money.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I think it was politically motivated on two parts. And I think the Kenan family was very active in the planning stages of it.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Yeah. There was talk at one time of settling it right down here on this old—which would be about two miles from us.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

I heard it called the Kenan Plantation since we've been down here. Is that the same place?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well, we refer to it as Kenan Quarters. The plantation itself was in Kenansville. But the property that the Kenans owned—we're going back now to the 1700s—actually run down here in the Northeast community. It was Lochland. It referred to the Scottish loch lands of that era. I'm going back now into the middle 1800s. That's how this precinct in here gets its name, the Lochland precinct. It's our voting place, where we go to vote. It got the name from the loch land [unclear] belonging to the Kenan family. And we always referred to it as Kenan Quarters. My dad—probably Uncle Raymond might remember—but my dad died two years ago at ninety-five. He said as a child he could remember the little slave huts that were up there on that. And there is a ditch that is in existence today that goes up from those loch land [unclear] to the mouth, or to the northeast Cape Fear River that was dug by slave labor, a big canal.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

For the purpose of—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

For the purpose of draining those loch lands that were up in the [unclear] , getting that water out of those wetlands, which, incidentally, are still wetlands even today.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

The old Kenan house that Richard dated from was just across that ditch.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The old Tom Kenan place, was it not?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah. That was the Kenan's home.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Which was James's brother.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And there is a slave cemetery on that land that we saw?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I've heard some of them call it a slave cemetery. But that cemetery is still being used today. It may have started out as a slave cemetery. But there is some—. Lord I don't remember those black people's names. Turn right there past [unclear] place and go up in there.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Just across that Kenan ditch.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. Right across the Kenan ditch. What's the name of that cemetery up there? Do you remember?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

No.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

There's some Kenans buried in there with black Kenans.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah. There's some of the black people that were Kenans.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Right.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

And they're in there. Well, all of these now that we know now from [unclear] . One of them dies he goes—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. There were some inter-racial things going on there with the Kenan family.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Uh-huh, which was common.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Which was common, right, right.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well back to the transpark. When you say we thought such and such about it. Who was we? Was there a community organization?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The consensus of the community, yes. A community program started out that was called RANT. Was it called RANT?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

I know everyone around here was against it because we did not want to [unclear] .

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The idea wasn't too bad. But everyone knew from the start, it was all politically motivated. They knew the money was going to be wasted. And just—. North Carolina—this side of North Carolina, especially this area of North Carolina is the last to get anything. I mean the people down here realize that Mecklenberg County, RDU, Research Triangle Park, basically, that's where the money goes. So they started off with it and said you might as well put it around Raleigh, you know, where it can be used. It's not going to work in Kinston. Who goes to Kinston? Who needs Kinston? There's not even interstate access hardly. So it looked like a dead horse to start with. And no one could convince anybody any different. So the—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

They go up to five dollars on our licenses. Is it this year or next year?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

They did it last year. It's off now.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Off now?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well you take every car there was, truck in North Carolina and add five dollars to it, see where it goes.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

That was the main [unclear] the five-dollar tax.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

If you write and ask—. If you ask the right politician they will tell you. As a matter of fact, I got a letter to this extent that the reason we're suffering in the swine industry now is because we, of this community, elected not to have the global transport here, if you can imagine that mentality.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Do you think you stopped it?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. I really don't think this was a great—we were a great consideration anyway. I think, here again, it was a political thing and that the properties were available here. But we don't have the infrastructure to support anything like that. At that time there was no I-40. We didn't have the roads. I don't even know if it was on the planning board then. And our people—and when I say our people it was the greater consensus of this community that formed an organization that—. We want to be heard. We wanted to be heard politically. And we were. We attended some meetings in Raleigh. And, you know, it was forced upon us. I think the term they used, the intimate domain, wherein that our farm community could be condemned—if that's the right word—to make space for runways or whatever was needed for this transglobal park. And you've heard me say earlier how deep our roots run here. And our people were totally against it from the initial planning stages.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And what was your organization called? It was RANT.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I'm sitting here trying to think right now what was the name of it. It'll come to me in a minute. If it does, I'll remind you.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. How about the leaders? Who were those people?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I was one of them. And there were four or five—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Jennie and Aaron.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Jennie Cavenaugh, Lucille Rangio, myself, Sammy Cavenaugh—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Sammy as in Sambo.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. Not this Sambo, this was Sammy up the road. I don't know—. You met—. I don't know if you talked to Sammy last night when you talked to Frank or not.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

No.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Sammy is—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Frank's nephew.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Frank's nephew.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

I talked to Andy.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Oh, okay.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Yeah. That's Frank's—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well this was Andy's cousin, Sammy. But there were a few that just began to ask some questions.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They would have all been misplaced, transported out.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Global transport.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Uh-huh.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I think it will never materialize here.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

It had a rail like this and all those people would have been the first to go. And then when it grew, they had another parameter around it. And we were in the second phase. So we would have been gone.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The first phase came right up here to the creek. And then the second phase would have been us.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

And you think four or five or six miles of people being washed away—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

It'd be from here right on into—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Chinquapin.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Chinquapin.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Then you had the church groups behind it because the noise pollution that it would bring about. You had the poultry farmers here that have established poultry businesses that were afraid of the noise pollution that it would bring about.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Scare the chickens, is that—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Scare the chickens.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Scare the dickens out of them.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

There was the horned owl issue that came about, which the habitat was in those wetlands. And certainly we used everything that we could that was an issue. And personally—. Was it Martin, Governor Martin? This was more or less his last political stand as he left office. And, you know, the record speaks for itself. Where is the transglobal park today compared to where it was ten years ago? It's never got off the ground. Now that's not to stay that it could not have. The same thing could have happened here. It could be. We don't know. But as a community we were against it and we spoke against it.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And did you have—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

CLOUT, the name of the organization was CLOUT, C-L-O-U-T. And what did it mean? Concerned—. I don't remember what it stood for right now. I tried to erase that from my mind. But I have received a letter less than a year ago, or maybe two years ago, when the people would go to wake up to the pollutants that is being caused by the swine market. Somebody wrote me a letter—it was not signed—and asked me was I satisfied, knowing that I was a canoeist, with the shape of the rivers. That had we had transglobal park we wouldn't have to trade off for the environmental issues that have hit this community as well as southeastern North Carolina. And [unclear] .

CHARLES THOMPSON:

CLOUT.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The park doesn't have the power that the swine industry does.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

And the part that carries right on over to the River Landing issue because the swine industry has made that place. And, yes, to some extent, we're paying the price, which goes back to the environmental issues that we've already talked about.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You're paying a price for the River Landing development?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

In a sense because the swine industry is what built it. And with the contaminations that was in the flood as a result, in my opinion here, that a lot of it comes from the swine and the poultry pollutants that were a result of this flood. It was the swine market or the swine industry that built River Landing by the Murphys.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

And he was—turkeys, hogs, some cows and said a few horses would float down the river. Naturally, a lot of them would get hung up in places and stay right there. That's what, you see, has ruined our water.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Do you know why Wendell Murphy and his people would have chosen this community as a place for the golf course and the housing? Why—?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I think it's probably just the location.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Property was available.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Property was available and the location, the access to interstate. That, for some reason, this part did have a lot of hog houses either. There's not many places in this county you can go to find this big of area that's not got several hog houses. And you can't ask fifty or seventy-five thousand dollars for a lot if you've got to smell hog manure. So the location, I think.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That's very interesting. So can you describe River Landing? We haven't been in. But maybe you've been through on a canoe or something and you can tell us about it.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I've never been in. I hear it's a beautiful place.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I've been in there. Our company does work in there and I've been in there several times. And, you know, I don't envy those people. I personally would not live that like if I could afford it. Our roots are in the country that is—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That's in the country but it's not—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. It's in the country. But once you get inside it—inside that brick wall—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

It's a gated community.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. It's quote upper crust, if you will. And, incidentally, there's people that are living in there that can't afford to live in there. But it's part of the competition that exists among certain people of, not necessarily this community, but of Duplin County. I think for the most part that—. Well I started to say that perhaps it was built for the leaders of the swine industry because Duplin County is almost the world's—or was you might say, this country's capital of the pork producing market, probably still is. And there were a lot of imports that were brought down here to run the business, which is headquartered in Rose Hill, as the crow flies, less than five miles from where we sit. High-tech people, if you will, that were at that time living in Wilmington. And as River Landing began to develop some of those people resettled here to be closer to their work, if you will. There are some fine homes in there. There are some

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million and a half to two million dollar homes in there. And then there are some homes in there that are high dollar homes that are an average home that you would see out here in rural Northeast community.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Some of them in there's flooded just like we are.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

As a matter of fact, most of the homes that are in there are flooded just like we are. We are—our company was asked to do a contract on the heating and air to a home that the owner is moving up eleven feet high at a cost of over a hundred thousand dollars to jack that humongous home up off of the ground. Most of the homes in there were flooded first and some second floors. And there is—there's some Better Homes & Gardens homes in there.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

But understandably it was kept very—

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Oh it was kept very quiet.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

And no visitors were allowed in.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Even during Hurricane Fran, the first hurricane that we had here three or four years ago, there was a deputy sheriff at the gate. Nobody come in, particularly the press.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Right. That's one reason—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

And, hey, I can understand that, you know. You don't want that news—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

You don't want people seeing the water on the top of the [unclear] flag.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

And, you know, we as a community—. My father said that a flood came here in 1900. He didn't remember it. But he heard talk of the flood of 1900. There was the flood of 1928. There was the flood of 1962, and, of course, this one. And as a community of which a consensus of the